Archive for Online Companies – Page 2

Jon Wheatley

Jon Wheatley is the creator of DailyBooth, a blogging site that allows users to share pictures, videos, and posts about their daily lives. He was able to raise around $8 million to create the highly successful site. Due to the success of the website, his net worth went up to $1 million and Wheatley is now able to focus on more ventures and projects

Cites:

https://www.lifehack.org/588440/16-young-and-successful-entrepreneurs-who-prove-that-age-is-nothing-but-a-number

https://www.bing.com/search?q=jon-paul%20wheatley%20bio&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=jon-paul%20wheatley%20bio&sc=2-21&sk=&cvid=967375C5C0A246A98691EDF59468FA1D

Catherine Cook

Catherine Cook is the Founder of MyYearBook.com which focused on putting high school year books online instead of having hard copies. She founded the company with her brother Dave Cook when she was 15, and with the help of her eldest brother Geoff Cook as the main investor, they were able to launch.

Catherine’s reasoning for creating the website was that she had just moved to Skillman NJ and started school with no friends. She looked through the year books to see if there was anyone that she knew and then had the thought why not put all this information online for easy access to all. After asking the help of her brother Geoff and Dave, she was able to put the website together and it was an instant success

Cites:

https://www.lifehack.org/588440/16-young-and-successful-entrepreneurs-who-prove-that-age-is-nothing-but-a-number

https://www.inc.com/magazine/201205/liz-welch/catherine-cook-and-geoff-cook-myyearbook.html

Shya Designs: Affecting Change, One Bag At A Time

Nestled in the corner of a white-walled room in North-East Ohio, a small shelving unit made of detachable plywood boxes stacked cockeyed contains colorful, unique bags, laptop cases, and pencil pouches. Keyboards clack and mouses click as students glaze over screens bearing WordPress, InDesign, and various word processors or spreadsheets. One group of students package these same colorful bags and jewelry into grey plastic shipping pouches. A young, wild-haired man bounces around the room from group to group, answering questions and helping them acquire needed resources, all in a fashion very different from a typical teacher stereotype. Believe it or not, this is in fact a classroom and the apparent chaos these students are engaged in is part of their curriculum. This is Shya Designs, the crown jewel of the Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy (CVCA) School of Business and Entreprenership (SOBE) program.

Five years ago, CEO of Valmark Financial Larry Rybka, traveled to Rwandan and encountered a group of widows of the Genocide who created these beautiful handcrafted bags to support themselves and their children. Because of his ties to CVCA, Rybka brought several hundred dollars worth of the product to the SOBE chair, Eric Ling (the aforementioned “young, wild-haired man”) to see if there was any way his students could get involved. Thus, Shya Designs was born. Shya Designs is a non-profit business that imports, markets, and sells handcrafted Rwandan bags made by widows of victims of the Rwandan Genocide. This allows these women to be self-sufficient and send their children to school. Because Shya Designs is completely student-run, it allows us to have an incredible hands-on business learning experience, while dramatically impacting the lives of women halfway across the world. This program, started by student entrepreneurs supports women entrepreneurs in an mutually beneficial partnership. Since this non-profit began five years ago, because of increased sales in the United States, the Rwandan co-op has been able to hire three more women to their team. This is three more families provided for and three more sets of children now able to attend school.

Because seniors in high school don’t stay that way forever, Shya Designs is a legacy business. Every year, the up and coming junior interview for roles like CEO, CMO, Director of Public Relations, as well as many others. The seniors choose their successors, and thus the business lives on through this changing of hands. This win-win relationship is not only a creative solution to a problem, but one that has proven year after year to be successful!

Andrew Mason

Andrew Mason is well known as being the founder and former CEO of Groupon but that is not the only thing he has accomplished. Mason grew up in Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania and at the young age of 15 started a delivery service called “Bagel Express” which operated Saturday mornings. In 2003 He graduated from Northwest University with a degree in music. Instead of going into the music industry however Mason worked for the entrepreneur Eric Lefkofsky as a web designer. After that a well-known Chicago recording studio called Electrical Audio hired Mason as an intern and later an employee. In 2006 Mason was supported by Lefkofsky to start The Point which was an internet social program designed to organize the boycotting and supporting of different causes. The Point had trouble in the market, so it was changed to what we now Know as Groupon, a website that sells coupons for local businesses. Mason was the CEO of Groupon from 2007 to 2013 when he was fired because sales and profit had gone down. In 2015 Mason founded the app Detour which provided audio tours of major cities, Bose acquired this app in 2018. Now Mason works as the CEO of Descript an audio word processing platform that allows an editor or producers to edit sound files. Now Descript is adding a new feature which allows you to type an audio recording that will be in your own voice without you having to record the audio. Andrew Mason shows the creativity and out of the box thinking that I believe all Entrepreneurs demonstrate.

MyYearBook.com

Background

Geoff and Catherine Cook are siblings who created a website called Myearbook.com; I have never been on the website but they are doing really well and is thinking about making their company public soon. Geoff was in Harvard when he sold his first business in 2002 and Catherine was still in high school. A few years later they came up with a yearbook but online. They had a problem when they started looking for people in the yearbook, but they didn’t recognize anyone. They also thought that information was useless, so their idea was to make it more accessible and a easier to use but online.

There now making millions of dollars and merged with another website that was like theres but in Latin america.

 

Sofi Overton – Wise Pocket

Meet Sofi Overton, a young entrepreneur who found a wonderful new way for girls to store their phones when they are wearing leggings. Sofi started her company– Wise Pocket– when she began noticing how her older cousin had to put her phone in her socks when she was wearing leggings.

Sofi took this thought and ran with it as she designed socks that have pockets high up on the sock that prevents the phone from falling down the wearer’s legs. Not only that, but Sofi also designed leggings that had pockets big enough for an individuals phone, while keeping the wearer comfortable.

Her good business is not as impressive as her kind heart as she donates a pair of socks to homeless kids and people with every pair that is purchased. This all started because of the numerous number of people in school district alone who live without a home: 627.

Sofi’s mission to make socks and leggings for active kids like her has transformed into a business that has not stopped selling. She currently has three designs that are coming soon in her legging line and socks that are simple but fashionable.

Furthermore, she sells hats and hoodies to increase her business. Sofi has done a wonderful job starting her own business.

Brandon and Sebastian Martinez – Are You Kidding

Are You Kidding SocksMeet two brothers, Brandon (13) and Sebastian (11) Martinez. These two young entrepreneurs had a crazy idea that started back in 2014 to start designing and then selling socks. This company started with the two brother’s passion to draw and design colorful designs and then selling them to individuals. Their selling spirit was not only to sell their fun and brightly colored socks, but to also help raise funds and awareness to charities in their local area as well as around the nation. Some of these charities include; Stand Up To Cancer, JDRF, Autism Speaks and so many more. 

They both find it very important to help initiate and inspire kids to help the community around them: and they lead by example. The brothers partnered with schools and charities in order to help provide annual fundraisers to benefit those around them. They both want their story to inspire those around them to pursue their dreams and help people along their journey.

Cherie Tan

Cherie Tan at the young age of 14 started freelancing as a web designer. She loved creating beautiful virtual things that she and her virtual friends all enjoyed. Cherie went all in and taught herself Photoshop, CSS and JavaScript with the motivation of creating beautiful websites and this brought her her first paying client. At Newcastle University in the UK Cherie earned a second-upper honors degree in electrical engineering. During this time her freelance career had led her to stating the beginnings of her software development and design firm as well as taking on different challenging project from all over the world. In 2016 Cherie founded Mogul Tech International to help her handle all the requests she had started receiving. Modul Tech is a company where the employees are trained in remote work designing websites, products, growth strategies, and beautiful software for many different companies. Having a remote team has its challenges Cherie says but she says it is rewarding as well and she has seen it pay off many times with clients, the team members, and herself. In 2018 Cherie changed her focus and became certified and registered as an Associate Wealth Planner in Singapore, shifting to the financial industry. Now she is hoping to start a code academy for kids inside Singapore. Cherie is also very active in her community mentoring teens in the local public schools in Singapore as well as volunteering at local community shelters. Cherie Tan demonstrates so many entrepreneurial gifts and is doing amazing work.

Drop Out to Success

Matt Mullenweg started his adult life as a political science major at the university of Huston. He soon realized that this was not the place for him and he dropped out of college. He then worked at a network company for two years before leaving and creating his own company. He and a friend started Auttomattic, an internet company that has brands such as word press and tumblr. It is great to see a success story where someone found out that school wasn’t their calling and decided to leave and pursue a different path. Mullenweg had extreme courage to leave the normal path and plunder into the path of the unkown. We sometimes think that to become successful we must follow the lead of many other successful people and go to college, the fact is that if the college path isn’t for you, you may still gain wisdom in other ways and become successful in your own way. Mullenweg is now the CEO of Automattic which currently owns Word Press and its over 70 million websites.

From Entrepreneur to Billionaire Mayor

Michael Bloomberg is one of the most respected men in the State of New York and in New York City. Bloomberg was born in 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts to Polish immigrants. His father was a bookkeeper and his mother was a secretary. Bloomberg put himself through Johns Hopkins university and from Harvard in 1966 with a Masters in Business Administration. Shortly after school Bloomberg found a job with the red hot investment banking firm Salomon Brothers and quickly rose to partner in 1972. After Salomon’s demise in 1981, Michael Bloomberg received a large partner buyout in excess of $10 million.

Michael Bloomberg decided to use his newfound wealth to start his own business, and in 1981 he formed Innovative Market Systems, which he would later rename to Bloomberg. The company originally sold computer terminals to Wall Street investment banks that would provide market news and stock data. The Bloomberg Terminal was a dual screen standalone, portable, and “open,” or PC-connectible software that provided premier multimedia news, electronic communications, specialized financial computation services, financial pricing, advanced data analytics, and data for all major global securities markets. Early on, Bloomberg did not have many customers, as the Bloomberg Terminal was seen as a futuristic and ambitious concept. Nevertheless Bloomberg was able to secure a sale of its new, (not yet completed terminal), from Merrill Lynch ONLY if Bloomberg could deliver the terminals to Merrill Lynch within 6 months.

Upon delivery of the Bloomberg Terminal, Merrill Lynch was so impressed that they ordered 20 units for their traders, and agreed to purchase a 30% stake in IMS for $30 million. With fresh funding, and the expertise of Merrill Lynch elite traders, Michael Bloomberg was able to develop and improve his terminal system to appeal to the broader market. In 1984, Bloomberg brought his Terminal to the world market, but faced over 20 different competitors who were supplying similar services to top Wall Street firms. However, what set Bloomberg Terminal apart from the competition and allowed for the company to capture the market was its ability to go beyond surface level data. For example, on the Terminal, a trader could access roughly 40 links to in-depth information on any bond, which were displayed around a central chart displaying the bond’s current price. The Terminal also provided in depth and colorful data analytics that was unrivaled by any other analytics firm.

In 1986, Michael Bloomberg officially changed the firm’s name to Bloomberg L.P. Soon after changing the name and receiving much success on Wall Street, the firm experienced explosive growth. Today Bloomberg L.P. has millions of Terminal subscribers including The White House, the Vatican, Bank of England, and virtually every large financial services company in the world. Bloomberg’s news service has over 150 bureaus 73 countries worldwide. The firm boasts revenues of $10+ Billion. Michael Bloomberg’s personal net-worth is estimated around $56+ Billion.

What I learned from researching Michael Bloomberg is that you can never be too old to start a business. Bloomberg was 39 when he started IMS, and has never stopped innovating. Bloomberg never stopped developing his terminal system, and I admire him for completely transforming the way people receive and perceive their news and market data. The Bloomberg Terminal at the time revolutionized the way traders received news and market data, and helped traders make better decisions for themselves and their clients. Bloomberg had the passion and drive to change the way Americans, and the world views news and data. Bloomberg news has a large influence today on millions of Americans, and continues to influence market data by providing second by second in depth information on market news combined with data analytics.